My quartier of Parakou used to be known for its tranquillity. No longer. Each night I go to bed with earplugs. Buvettes (small bars) 200 or 300 metres distant send waves of thumping music that rattle my eardrums. It may continue well past midnight.

Earlier in the evening the preacher from a nearby church berates the devil, at the top of his voice. Is his god dozing or deaf?

Most weekends I go running at the town sports stadium. I aim for 18 laps. Today on my sixth lap I notice a man setting up loudspeakers and a sound system. Two laps further on, the music begins. As I run past the speakers, sound vibrates my flesh. The noise easily drowns the beat from the phones my fellow runners carry.

At our eye hospital we may see over 150 patients on a busy day. Each of the two large consulting rooms is used simultaneously by an ophthalmologist and a specialist nurse. With patients coming from all corners of Benin and beyond, and there being dozens of languages, we need translators. Hearing these exchanges is tricky if the waiting throng is restless.

Add to that fractious children (my colleague is a paediatric ophthalmologist), loud-voiced market ladies, the occasional hard-of-hearing person who only understands if someone bellows in their ear, and you have a cacophony. It's a wonder that patients grasp their diagnosis and how to use eye drops.

When it all gets too much I stop work. An assistant goes to the waiting room to clap hands. A hush descends. It doesn't last.

Several times most days the siren wail of the fire engine pierces the town as it rushes to the site of another road crash. My neighbours' baby screams as she is bathed outdoors. During the day, a high-pitched saw slices through timber at a sawmill in this residential zone.

The dawn cockerel, a whining cat, a bevy of barking dogs, even rodents or lizards scurrying across my plywood ceiling all add their bit.

Benin does have laws regulating noise. Siesta time and the hours after 10pm are protected. But no one enforces such a law.

And all that is without daring to mention the mosques that five times daily remind the faithful to pray.